Limitations

This was a retrospective chart review and used subjective interpretation of medical records to develop presentation categories. By using presentation categories, our intention was to provide more meaningful information than what is typically derived from the chief complaint, final diagnosis, or other objective outputs from health records. Our investigation of interventions was limited to device-specific encounters. Therefore, we did not report data on interventions for more common presentations such as bleeding and infection. Although we studied a large sample of patients across several years, we were limited to ED presentations at a single institution, and exclusively studied patients who had their LVAD placed at that same institution. Additionally, all patients received either the HeartMate II™ or HeartWare™ device, and thus our study does not include presentations of patients with other devices.

Conflicts of Interest By the WestJEM article submission agreement, all authors are required to disclose all affiliations, funding sources and financial or management relationships that could be perceived as potential sources of bias. No author has professional or financial relationships with any companies that are relevant to this study. There are no conflicts of interest or sources of funding to declare.